The Rise in Crypto Mining is Forcing Gamers to Shell Out Twice as Much for GPU

2017 was by far been the best year for Cryptocurrencies and Blockchain in general. A select few projects started seeing fruition in terms of implementation, and for the first time, the market witnessed a steep decline in Bitcoin dominance. The exponential rise in the cryptocurrency space has turned into a cradle of birth for many millionaires and billionaires. In hindsight, the crypto mining process comes with its own set of limitations and adverse effects. The rise of cryptocurrency has adversely affected the PC gaming space. Wondering how? Read on.

The crypto-mining process involves solving complex mathematical problems, and in the process of doing so, the miner will be awarded a share of the cryptocurrency. As more and more miners compete for the block reward, the hash-rate and the mining calculations will increase. It is, for this reason, the demand for GPU has skyrocketed, and the prices have more than doubled.

Gamespot reveals that the rise in GPU price has been proportional to the increase in awareness about the GPU which is used for mining process. They have further charted a comparison, which shows that the price for GeForce GTX 1080 Ti, which has increased from an MSRP of $700 to $1,350. The GTX 1080 Ti is a flagship GPU offering from Nvidia and is known to offer a decent hash rate for mining.

The increase in price can also be seen across AMD graphic processing units. For instance, Radeon RX Vega 64 literally tripled in value from $500 to $1500 and apparently, the cards are sold out most of the time, thanks to the increased demand and limited supply. Well, the issue here is that gamers often purchase individual components to build their own gaming rigs and thanks to the inflated prices they are often forced to go for pre-built systems from the vendors.

The vendors, on the other hand, follow a strict pricing policy and this prevents them from increasing the PC prices in accordance with the increase in GPU prices. Perhaps, its high time that the GPU prices are regulated so that gamers and vendors don’t have to bear the brunt.

Mahit Huilgol Ex-Author Mahit Huilgol is a Mechanical Engineering graduate and is a Technology and Automobile aficionado. He ditched the Corporate boardroom wars in favor of technology battleground. Also, a foodie by heart and loves both the edible chips and the non-edible silicon chips.